A painting of a Cambridge academic is among recent acquisitions by the National Portrait Gallery.

The picture of Professor Onora O’Neill, the eminent philosopher and Principal of Newnham College Cambridge, was commissioned by the Gallery last year.

When the Gallery was founded in 1856 to collect the likenesses of British men and women, people were only eligible if they had been dead for at least ten years or were members of the Royal Family.

Then in the 1960s the Trustees, on the advice of the Gallery's enthusiastic new Director, Roy Strong, decided that introducing the living would be a good idea.

By 1980 a formal commissioning process was in place, with the intention of commissioning a small number – around six a year – of eminent sitters not already well-represented in the collection.

Principal of Newnham since 1992, the philosopher and writer Onora O’Neill, lectures in the faculties of Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science. She has written books and articles on ethics, on political philosophy, on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and on bioethics.

She is a former member and chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission, and chairs the Nuffield Foundation. She is a Member of the House of Lords (Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve), sits as a crossbencher, was a member of the Select Committee on Stem Cell Research and is currently a member of the Select Committee on BBC Charter Review.

She has been portrayed by Victoria Russell, who trained at St Martin’s and the Royal Academy, has been included in the BP Portrait Awards twice and was the winner in 2000. Her BP Portrait commission is of the actress Fiona Shaw.

“I admire Victoria’s paintings, which show a lot about her sitters, yet are quite minimal about context or setting. Being painted by her was also lots of fun – much laughter, manageable amounts of sitting still and large mugs of real lemon and ginger tea,” said O’Neill.

The painting was hung in June this year. Other recent subjects include the novelist J K Rowling, Trade Unionist Bill Morris, footballer David Beckham, conductor Bernand Haitink, journalist and writer Jan Morris and hospice movement founder Cicely Saunders.

Onora O’Neill

Victoria Kate Russell, 2004

National Portrait Gallery, London

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